Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Using Company Laptop For Personal Use
An anonymous reader writes "I'm starting a new job soon, and I will be issued a work laptop. For obvious reasons I cannot name any names, but I can state that I do expect my employer to have tracking software on the laptop, and I expect to not be the administrator on the device. That being said, I am not the kind of person who can just 'not browse the internet.' If I ever have to travel with this laptop, I may want to read an ebook or watch a movie or maybe even play a game. I can make an image of the drive, then wipe the machine, and restore it back to its former state if I ever have to return it. I can use portable apps off a usb key and browse in private mode. The machine will be encrypted, but I can also make myself my own little encrypted folder or partition perhaps. Are there any other precautions I could or should take?"
So you enjoy lugging around two laptops when sent on a business trip?
I have a better solution: learn to read a book, and work off your information overload addiction. The asker stuffs his life full of technology because it is empty. He should confront that emptiness.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
I bring a Knoppix live CD, a ruggedized 500GB USB drive (Adata SH93, which is powered from a single USB port), and headphones. In total, this adds less than half a kilo to the mass I have to carry, and almost nothing to the bulk. The laptop hard disk is untouched, as it's not even mounted when Knoppix boots. I'm only using the laptop for personal purposes in hotels to either (i) surf the web, (ii) access non-work email accounts, or (iii) watch movies. I generally copy a selection of movies from the home media server to the USB drive before traveling - hotels often charge outrageous amounts for their limited selection of premium channels, and the company won't cover such charges. If I download anything, it also goes to the USB drive.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
You can lock down a laptop sufficiently so that even though you've lost physical control of the machine, nothing short of replacing the hard disk is going to compromise the system. If your employees are doing that just to circumvent IT policy, maybe THEY should be treated as the hostile one, not the laptop.
I'm amused how much ire that simple comment stirred up. For the record, I had made the assumption that the trip was going to be relatively short, and that the asker couldn't handle a day or two of, as you've called it, 'inefficiency'. If we're talking about week-long trips or extremely frequent trips then I completely understand, but the whole amount of productivity being lost if the trips are short is really relatively trivial when compared against the total amount of intellectual productivity he'll have in his entire lifetime. Wouldn't that strike you as just a little bit obsessive?
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
That was 2007. I'm pretty certain those same people are showing up at 9 and working until done now. Changing the situation of "more jobs than kids" to "less jobs than kids" changes a helluva lot.
I'm sure your laptop has monitoring software, but the question is... who is actually looking at the monitoring and do they care?
I have a laptop issued for work. At work I used my desktop, but when I need to remotely work, I used my work laptop.
If you're honest with yourself, chances are you won't get in trouble. Unless you work for a hyper security company. Are you putting in an honest days work at the office? Beyond that, they're giving you a laptop . Just like if they gave you a company car. Some amount of personal use is generally tolerated.
When I'm at home, I use my laptop quite liberally. Some small games, web browsing... are all good.
I don't do anything 'illegal' on it though.
I think you need to relax a little bit. By all means find out what monitoring policies your company has... but if its like 99% of companies, all the data goes into a giant pit no one looks at... until you give them a reason to look at it.
As a software engineer, whenever I have to work with IT people like you, I happily leave the company's laptop unused and locked in a drawer beneath my desk and use my MacBook Pro instead. All the information needed to access corporate services is in my possession anyway, so you're none the wiser. If you block Internet access at work, I will happily tether to my iPhone or bring my iPad.
To put it simple: in this day and age you can't afford to think you have that kind of control. If there's sensitive information, the only way to be on the safe side is to ensure that it never leaves the company, which is something that you can still do.
The solution I came up with was to buy a spare hard drive and caddy for the machine. When I wanted to do my own thing, I swapped out the drives.
If a) you're running windows on your second drive and b) the employer has deployed tracking software like Computrace then Computrace will self-heal onto your second drive and the swap will be detected. No worries if you're running Linux on the swapped drive.